Is Google causing car crashes in California?

May 11, 2015

Four of the 48 cars currently driving themselves around California have been in accidents since September. [NBC News]

Two of the accidents occurred while the cars were driving themselves, and two took place while a person was in control of the wheel. The state keeps track of accidents involving the self-driving cars for which it has issued permits, but citing confidentiality provisions, the California Department of Motor Vehicles has not issued reports on the accidents.

All of the accidents involved speeds of less than 10 mph. Three involved Lexus SUVs outfitted with Google equipment, and the other involved parts supplier Delphi Automotive.

Google and Delphi are currently testing self-driving cars on state roads under DMV permits. Both companies said their cars were not at fault in any of the accidents, and the collisions were minor.

A Delphi spokeswomen said its car was broadsided while waiting to make a left-turn with a human driver in control. Google, which has 23 Lexus SUVs, would not discuss the details of its three California collisions.

Last year, the head of Google’s self-driving car program acknowledged that three of its vehicles were involved in minor collisions when the company first sent them onto public roads without state permission.

Just wait until the taxpayers are required to fund the infrastructure required for this to work safely. Oh yes, and then it will be required for every vehicle. The robo-cops will be able to signal your vehicle over and hand you the ticket, object and your vehicle goes nowhere until you buy your way out of jail.

Yes you will pay for the sensors that come with your car but everyone will pay for the additional GPS towers needed for redundant service to assure that the vehicles will always know where they are within inches. Yes it can work and so goes the bold new world.

You are over-estimating future law enforcement. No one will pull you over or anything, you’ll just have the fine automatically deducted from your accounts. No need for the LEO to actually work. Then they’ll become the new bank tellers / travel agents of the workforce.

You mean like how they quietly got in bed with NSA to help code the quasi-AI algorithms to search all that illegally-acquired internet data? (btw: cellphone calls, texts, etc. are through the internet at some point)

The whole pattern-recognition analysis done that is beyond anything T-9 or the crypto guys at No Such Agency could ever come up with?

Or are you just thinking of the predictable shopping / needs / wants patterns they do and sell that information to merchants and data marketers?

…but all that stuff is FREE! I can keep my personal stuff on “the cloud” and it’s totally secure and legit. >.>